Wiki Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software

[alloverx]

Tesla could probably issue some new shares now to pay for all the older S/X battery replacements.
Plus if they used rebuilt packs it would not be that expensive.

 

[DJRas]

Tesla has over $900,000,000 in warranty reserves. That would pay for more than 40,000 battery packs.

 

[Chaserr]

That would only be 2012-2013 though wouldn't it? Assuming every battery through ~2016 75kwh is affected like wk057 claimed (and from how they responded it seems true) they really should be offering us affordable replacements before the NHTSA and class action decisions come down and close that option. I would take the paid upgrade path if it was brought back again.

 

[omarsultan]

Again, we don't know the bounds of the issue. I assume it's beyond the "few" being claimed, otherwise their approach makes no sense. If, for instance, we say all pre-facelift S&X are affected or will eventually be affected, that's ~130K cars and at $20K for new pack, that's something like $2.6B. Even if its ends up being only half of those cars, its well beyond the current warranty reserves.

Beyond the direct warranty costs, there is the negative impact to Tesla's reputation and future sales--and to some degree, EVs as a whole. Tesla is the poster child for EVs so any issue with longevity or safety is is going to get painted on all EVs.

 

[Ferrycraigs]

Has anyone said they have a pre-facelift car that is not impacted by chargegate?

Although it would be tempting to say 'hands up everyone that’s not here' it would be useful to know how many TMC owners with pre facelifts have not been affected by slower charging, if any. I know there are lots of owners in UK that report they are not affected, but I do not know if any of them are PFL. If it is every PFL car, I would say that is a pretty serious escalation and the magazines should be shouting it from the rooftops.

 

[Gixx1300R]

Again, we don't know the bounds of the issue. I assume it's beyond the "few" being claimed, otherwise their approach makes no sense. If, for instance, we say all pre-facelift S&X are affected or will eventually be affected, that's ~130K cars and at $20K for new pack, that's something like $2.6B. Even if its ends up being only half of those cars, its well beyond the current warranty reserves.

That is incorrect, 20K is what Tesla charges us for a battery pack, I am sure Tesla's purchase price is greatly reduced from Panasonic, all packs that are recovered can be disassembled and recycled.

 

[Droschke]

I supercharged yesterday from 40% to 90%, and when done, the pump ran for 5 hours while the car was parked and plugged in. Lost 1 mile per hour by the pump running off of the HV battery. The outside temperature of about 50F.

Today, with the navigation destination set to the supercharger:

- The battery warming up icon was visible on the app
- Charged from 40% to 80%
- Outside temperature: 47F
- Charging speed: started at a pitiful 36kW steady to mid 20kW toward the end
- The cooling pump: Did not run at all

 

[omarsultan]

That is incorrect, 20K is what Tesla charges us for a battery pack, I am sure Tesla's purchase price is greatly reduced from Panasonic, all packs that are recovered can be disassembled and recycled.

Sure--I was using round numbers to simplify things., but I don't think the savings are as great as you might expect If we take Tesla's ~20% gross margin on vehicles, we can model that the loaded cost to them for a pack is ~$16K. Beyond that there are a number of one-time charges that need to be taken into account:

• This magical pack does not exist--I assume we are not just getting packs with cells with the same issue, so the there is R&D cost to develop and test a new pack and associated software
  • Even if they just decide to use the 2170 cells and can build a 2170-based pack that will fit in our cars (big if), that then supply constrains the 3 and the Y which might not be desirable for the revenue and profitability hit it creates over multiple qtrs
• Increased logistics costs in moving all these packs around to various service centers and then moving old packs to wherever they are going
• New storage costs associated with storing both new packs and the old replaced packs
• New labor costs to build the packs and replace the packs
• Costs to disassembling the old packs and disposing of non-recyclable elements. Any benefit they get from that will be on the back end of the process--they will still need to "front" the money for the new cells first--like paying the recycling deposit on a can or bottle

I see folks saying they don't care what happens to Tesla. I would gently suggest you should. Right now we have working cars, even if they are glorified city cars. We have a supercharging network, most of us have access to service departments and new parts and the cars have reasonable resale value. Granted all of these not as great as they once were or as we were promised, but they do exist. If Tesla goes under, we will really will have paperweights and it will provide the excuse for these legacy manufacture to pull back on their EV plans (ironically, they will probably say its out of abundance of caution to protect their customers).

 

[Gixx1300R]

Sure--I was using round numbers to simplify things., but I don't think the savings are as great as you might expect If we take Tesla's ~20% gross margin on vehicles, we can model that the loaded cost to them for a pack is ~$16K. Beyond that there are a number of one-time charges that need to be taken into account:

• This magical pack does not exist--I assume we are not just getting packs with cells with the same issue, so the there is R&D cost to develop and test a new pack and associated software
  • Even if they just decide to use the 2170 cells and can build a 2170-based pack that will fit in our cars (big if), that then supply constrains the 3 and the Y which might not be desirable for the revenue and profitability hit it creates over multiple qtrs
• There are increased logistics costs in moving all these packs around to various service centers and then moving old packs to wherever they are going
• There are new storage costs associated with storing both new packs and the old replaced packs
• There are new labors costs to build the packs and replace the packs
• There is a costs to disassembling the old packs and disposing of non-recyclable elements. Any benefit they get from that will be on the back end of the process--they will still need to "front" the money for the new cells first--like paying the recycling deposit on a can or bottle

I see folks saying they don't care what happens to Tesla. I would gently suggest you should. Right now we have working cars, even if they are glorified city cars. We have a supercharging network, most of us have access to service departments and new parts and the cars have reasonable resale value. Granted all of these not as great as they once were or as we were promised, but they do exist. If Tesla goes under, we will really will have paperweights and it will provide the excuse for these legacy manufacture to pull back on their EV plans (ironically, they will probably say its out of abundance of caution to protect their customers).

Elon Musk and Tesla need to be taught a hard lesson that you cannot treat your customers in this manner, If it cost the company 2 billion to fix this, so be it. They will give pause if they ever think about doing it again in the future. We are not to blame, whom ever made the decision to nerf the battery packs is. Tesla stole from us, it is that simple, they sold us something and took it away without our permission. This type of behavior wouldn't be tolerated with any legacy automaker and we shouldn't tolerate it from Tesla.

 

[glhs272]

I certainly don't want Tesla to fail because of this. But,Tesla's strategy and communication on this issue to date is extremely poor. My opinion is they think they can get away with this because there is no real competition in the electric car market place. Full Disclosure: I am significantly invested in Tesla stock.

I may be mis-understanding things, but I thought this issue only applies to battery packs using the original carbon-only anode type cells (not the ones with silicon added). I.e. 60kwh (original), 70kwh, and 85kwh packs. The 75 kwh and 90kwh packs not being affected. I haven't read all 454 pages of this thread to fully research the issue. So, that would at least limit the scope on the number of cars. Model X and later model S cars not affected.

Also, rather than recalling and replacing all the old packs, perhaps Tesla could use a better strategy. Currently, their method of just crippling all cars with these packs is "using a hammer instead of a scalpel" type approach. Perhaps they could find a better way to identify packs with issues and focus only on those. In my case I know my pack is perfectly fine. I don't need a new pack. I am happy to continue using it the way I was prior with the degradation rates I was already seeing. Just give me my prior charging rates back. Also, for users who supercharge a lot and are concerned about this issue, perhaps add the option to the car for the driver to select "reduced charging rate" to select-ably throttle the supercharging rate to the lower setting for folks who are OK with charging slower.

For the cars with suspect packs that are still under warranty, Tesla needs to do the right thing and simply replace these with non-defective packs under warranty, period. For folks who have packs no longer under warranty, like myself, they should offer reasonable cost replacement packs.

 

[David99]

As for #chargegate, this has been happening for a long time. I had my car at the service for slower supercharging almost 2 years ago. Tesla has gradually reduced the charge rate of older cars for a long time. It went unnoticed by most because there are always fluctuations in charge speed and no one kept exact track of energy added per time. Also the car usually allows a high rate right after you plug in so everything looks fine.

But the reduced charge rate has been administered via software starting 4 years ago. There has been a substantial and sudden drop in charge rate with the software that also clipped the voltage. That's when people started to notice.

I also notice that the car reduces charge speed (supercharger) when on long trips. If you continue to drive and supercharge without giving the battery time to rest the charge speed drops even more. I have been driving 30k miles in the last 3 months and this effect is very noticeable to me. To most people this will not be an issue, though. My use case certainly is extreme but that's why this whole thing affects me so much. It make using my car so much more of a hassle because all the individual limits are adding up for me and slow me down.

 

[Chaserr]

Even if they just decide to use the 2170 cells and can build a 2170-based pack that will fit in our cars (big if),

Tesla Model S Plaid Nürburgring Prototype Has a Huge Rear Wing Elon says these have more than 100 kwh capacity packs, and I doubt it was a chemistry change 18650 otherwise the cars they are selling would have it already. They have a 2170 pack reworked and in testing right now.

I hope they are delaying all of us so they can ready the cheaper batteries for warranty replacements. The LR model 3 pack is only about 4kwh smaller than my 85 pack and costs "$5k - $8k" according to an unreliable twitter source who also happens top be Tesla's CEO.

I see folks saying they don't care what happens to Tesla. I would gently suggest you should. Right now we have working cars, even if they are glorified city cars. We have a supercharging network, most of us have access to service departments and new parts and the cars have reasonable resale value. Granted all of these not as great as they once were or as we were promised, but they do exist. If Tesla goes under, we will really will have paperweights and it will provide the excuse for these legacy manufacture to pull back on their EV plans (ironically, they will probably say its out of abundance of caution to protect their customers).

If we don't convince Tesla to stop doing this and to never do it again, Tesla WILL go under. What they are doing is going to make people unwilling to buy a Tesla. There aren't enoug car buyers willing to lose what they purchased stolen at some random time interval, and Tesla will increase how much they steal untiil the company has no customers if there aren't any repercussions to stop them from continuing to do what they are still doing.

Sometimes you have to punish a petulant child to help them become a responsible adult. If you let them steal when they are young they will spend their adulthood in prison as a convicted thief. Tesla needs a parent, they are acting childish.

 

[David99]

Is there anyone affected with a 100 pack?

 

[David99]

I hope they are delaying all of us so they can ready the cheaper batteries for warranty replacements. The LR model 3 pack is only about 4kwh smaller than my 85 pack and costs "$5k - $8k" according to an unreliable twitter source who also happens top be Tesla's CEO.

It would make no sense to replace all the old packs with the same kind that will develop the same issues again in a few years. I just can't see Tesla putting in these new packs into the affected cars. But maybe that would actually be the cheapest option for Tesla.

 

[Chaserr]

They only have to deliver specs. If they can increase capacity affordably and still make the advertised power, they can cap a replacement. It's too expensive, but a capped 100 pack can legally be used to replace our battery. Caps are illegal on our original batteries because we were sold uncapped 85 specifications. If capped specs match or exceed ours, they are OK, and most importantly safe and legal.

 

[omarsultan]

Elon Musk and Tesla need to be taught a hard lesson that you cannot treat your customers in this manner, If it cost the company 2 billion to fix this, so be it.

Sometimes you have to punish a petulant child to help them become a responsible adult.

There is a needle to thread here: Pyrrhic victory - Wikipedia

 

[Gixx1300R]

It would make no sense to replace all the old packs with the same kind that will develop the same issues again in a few years. I just can't see Tesla putting in these new packs into the affected cars. But maybe that would actually be the cheapest option for Tesla.

Tesla may be forced to if the class action lawsuit goes our way.

 

[Chaserr]

I posted a Mercedes NHTSA link earlier that addresses your fears. Tesla should be rushing to come clean right now - Mercedes was wrist slapped with a small fine and has to spend yours in a safety audit. Tesla could use that same treatment and should be trying to contact the same generous employees who managed the Mercedes punishment.

Tesla goes under if they aren't corrected. They should have come clean months ago before they put everything at risk. Now we're discussing the possibility that they screwed the pooch so badly we're hoping they survive at all. And right now, the NHTSA is feeling magnanimous... yet Tesla is still hostile and locked in for a battle it can't win.

 

[glhs272]

It would make no sense to replace all the old packs with the same kind that will develop the same issues again in a few years. I just can't see Tesla putting in these new packs into the affected cars. But maybe that would actually be the cheapest option for Tesla.

To me, due to Tesla's poor communication on the issue, I don't know for sure what the actual concern with the packs is, but I am assuming it is related to the cells themselves. Therefore, in theory there would be no need to change the architecture of the pack itself. Just build new packs with updated chemistry in the cells. Then they could build these replacement packs with the same 18650 form factor and not siphon off the 2170 cell supply. Perhaps this would be easier to Tesla to swallow.

Long term, sooner or later Tesla should/needs to create a replacement pack for the Model S\X product line. It would make a lot of sense to use the new cell and module design from the Model 3\Y

 

[Gixx1300R]